A FUN year!

For this last posting in the Blog of Bumblebees for the year 2019-20, the strangest year in education, I thought we would take a look back at all the fun we had, and all we accomplished – with a definite focus on fun! Above, a Bumblebee working on music at home in distance learning. It's been a great year with these friends, despite having to go to distance learning for the last three months. Have a wonderful summer, Bumblebees! I can't wait to see all you will do next year!

 Two more Bumblebees at swimming lessons.

 The fundraiser they started for the koalas in Australia after the horrific fires.

 Bike Day

 Everybody at Bike Day

 The visit to the Pumpkin farm.

LEGO challenges

During these last few weeks of school, the Bumblebees have been working their way through a LEGO challenge. Each day they receive the choice of two new LEGO challenges. They can choose one or both challenges or to choose from another day, one they did not try. The challenges might be something like you and four friends are trapped on a desert island. Design and build a boat to get you all safely home. Or it might be you are in a contest to build the tallest tower. Or you and your friends decide to design and build a tree house. 

Each day the Bumblebees use their skills to create something new. They have to design their structure, keeping in mind the limitations of the LEGOs they have at home, build it, evaluate it, change it if it needs changing and then evaluate it to ensure it meets the criteria of the challenge.

In both intended and unintended contexts and uses, LEGO lets kids exercise creativity and learn some fundamentals of engineering—almost in spite of themselves. “Math and physics concepts are built into every LEGO project,” says Tiffany Tseng, a graduate researcher in the MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergarten group. 

“Kids can build whatever’s in their imagination and, at the same time, develop spatial reasoning and learn about structural integrity, design, and a practical sense of geometry.” 

– From the MIT school of engineering website